Scudetto semifinals, Dinamo challenge the battleship Olimpia. After the lesson on Saturday, a shock is needed
SENT TO MILAN. “If you want to stay in Milan you have to go at 100 per hour,” Dino Meneghin once said. Banco di Sardegna discovers that in the playoffs it is forbidden to have uncertainties or gaps of any kind, least of all if you play with opponents who could field more than a quintet capable of hurting you. Things that the biancoblù already knew, but it is always painful to experience them on your own skin as happened on Saturday in match 1 of the semifinal at Olimpia Milano, which left the crumbs to the Sassari (88-71). Now he knows that in Milan he has to run at 100 per hour, like the red and white tank tops. The little time that the frenetic and merciless calendar of the final phase leaves for reflection was spent to collect the pieces and try to change the inertia of the series in race 2 already scheduled today, at 20.45, again at the Mediolanum Forum.
Aim to reopen the games. It can be done? Yes it can be done. Even Ettore Messina, coach of the Milanese (who on Saturday reached 72 career victories in the playoffs, equaling Pianigiani in first place), recalled the Giants’ ability to overturn extreme situations, and after the match he warned them about him. The biancoblù hoped to achieve more after the splendid series with Brescia, net of the objective strength of the Milanese who found the right solutions on several key men such as Logan and Burnell in particular, after having mended some tears they paid dearly for the bad day of too many players and less lucidity in shooting and defensive movements. In short, a bad day, despite which Sassari remained in the game (even -1) until the middle of the third quarter, only to give up definitively. From what was shown in those 25 minutes of the race, it is necessary to start again, relying on Bucchi’s proven ability to read situations and change heads and cards on the table. Jack Devecchi, Dinamo captain and Olimpia product, is also convinced of this: “We saw some good things to start from again – he says -, in the first half we managed to contain them while conceding a little too much to an attack that is difficult to face given the many options that Milan has. In the second half we had an aeration, playing it point by point with a good flame, but then that break cut our legs. We should have started from there, but unfortunately in defense it was not our best match and also in attack we did not find fluid solutions in some moments, with some of our main offensive terminals from the perimeter that found it difficult ».
But in some phases of the race in which you defended aggressively by restarting at speed you were able to put the battleship Olimpia in crisis: “We have to start from there, try to express our game 100% – replies Devecchi – Of course the defeat in race 1 it has an important gap, but I don’t see it as tragic. Milanese good at entrusting Burnell to 4 of him, Bentil, limiting him in the low post, while with the 3 Datome they were on Benje (Bendzius, ndc), managing to contain us with this coupling. But surely there will be some adjustments to find greater fluidity in the offensive maneuver ». Yesterday afternoon technical meeting and training, today is already race 2. And with the right precautions it could be surprisingly different from the first.